Home Server / NAS

[SKR25]

Budget (including currency): flexible, prefer <$500 USD (doesn't have to include HDDs, should include all other equipment)

Country: USA, close-ish to a MicroCenter

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: home server, NAS, video transcoding(?) & Plex/Jellyfin, "Linux ISOs", potentially VMs, etc., down the line.

Other details:

- Networking noob

- Tech savvy by regular standards, probably below average - average by LTT viewer standards.

- prefer simple set up, but also want to use as a learning opportunity (how to manage a network, etc.)

- already own these parts: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wpggBq. Would need a GPU, network switch, NIC, and HDDs/SSDs on top of this. (Anything else?)

 

My primary device is an ITX gaming PC with 2.5Gb LAN. My router is wifi 7 with 2.5Gb ethernet ports. Would I benefit from a 10Gb network switch & uplink between the switch and the home server, even if the connection between the router & server, and server & main PC is 2.5Gb? I was looking at this switch: https://a.co/d/eNEz2f6, but idk if I could get something cheaper that doesn't have the sfp+? Do I even need a switch? My router has 4 2.5Gb ports.

 

My motherboard, sadly, only has one PCI-E x16 slot. I was looking for 10Gb PCI-E x1 NICs, but this is the only one I could find: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/PCIE10GB/. Is it any good? As per my questions above, would I even need one? I wanted to leave the x16 slot open for the GPU.

 

Also, if anyone has guides on how to set up, manage, secure, etc. one of these after they're built and could link them, that'd be fantastic. Thank you!!!

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, SKR25 said:

 

My primary device is an ITX gaming PC with 2.5Gb LAN. My router is wifi 7 with 2.5Gb ethernet ports. Would I benefit from a 10Gb network switch & uplink between the switch and the home server, even if the connection between the router & server, and server & main PC is 2.5Gb? I was looking at this switch: https://a.co/d/eNEz2f6, but idk if I could get something cheaper that doesn't have the sfp+? Do I even need a switch? My router has 4 2.5Gb ports.

 

Probably not, your gonna be limited by 2.5GBe here anyways.

 

What OS do you want to use here? What is your drive config?

 

 

[SKR25]

12 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Probably not, your gonna be limited by 2.5GBe here anyways.

 

What OS do you want to use here? What is your drive config?

 

 

I haven't figured all of that out yet. I'm thinking either TrueNAS or Open Media Vault for the OS. I think that OS that Linus invested in is interesting, but I would rather deal with the learning curve than shell out $200.

For the drive config, I've been seeing great deals on refurbished SAS drives, so I was thinking I could pick up one of these HBAs along with as many high capacity SAS 12Gb drives I can find. I think I found 6-7 6Tb drives for ~$30 each. Based on my minimal knowledge, I'm leaning toward a RAID 10 config.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 hours ago, SKR25 said:

I haven't figured all of that out yet. I'm thinking either TrueNAS or Open Media Vault for the OS. I think that OS that Linus invested in is interesting, but I would rather deal with the learning curve than shell out $200.

For the drive config, I've been seeing great deals on refurbished SAS drives, so I was thinking I could pick up one of these HBAs along with as many high capacity SAS 12Gb drives I can find. I think I found 6-7 6Tb drives for ~$30 each. Based on my minimal knowledge, I'm leaning toward a RAID 10 config.

Do you want to be able to upgrade the array later on?

 

DO you care about power usage, using fewer bigger drives would save a bit of power.

 

Typically I'd go raid 5/6 for a home server setup like this.

[SKR25]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you want to be able to upgrade the array later on?

 

DO you care about power usage, using fewer bigger drives would save a bit of power.

 

Typically I'd go raid 5/6 for a home server setup like this.

Yes, I'd like to be able to update the array later.

 

Agreed on the point about a smaller number of bigger drives. Power consumption is not a chief concern for me right now (electricity is cheap where I live), but that could change, so I don't want to completely ignore efficiency concerns.

 

I've also found good deals on 12TB drives, so whether I bought 6TB or 12TB drives, the cost would be around $5-6/TB. I'm leaning toward buying 4 12TB drives and putting them in a RAID6 array for 24TB of usable space (correct?).

 

Would there be anything preventing me from purchasing another HBA later and adding more drives?

[Electronics Wizardy]

11 minutes ago, SKR25 said:

Yes, I'd like to be able to update the array later.

 

Agreed on the point about a smaller number of bigger drives. Power consumption is not a chief concern for me right now (electricity is cheap where I live), but that could change, so I don't want to completely ignore efficiency concerns.

 

I've also found good deals on 12TB drives, so whether I bought 6TB or 12TB drives, the cost would be around $5-6/TB. I'm leaning toward buying 4 12TB drives and putting them in a RAID6 array for 24TB of usable space (correct?).

 

Would there be anything preventing me from purchasing another HBA later and adding more drives?

Unraid might be best if you want easy expansion, esp with differnt drive sizes later on.

 

I'd typically aim for fewer vigger drives. 

 

WIth 4 drives, I'd go raid 5 over 6.